Confessor Macrina The Elder

Righteous Macrina the Elder was born before 270 in the region of Neocaesarea in Pontus. In her youth she was a disciple of St. Gregory the Wonderworker ("the Apostle of Neocaesarea"), who at that time headed that see.

During the persecutions (sources name Emperor Diocletian and/or Maximinus Daza), she and her husband lost their property for confessing the Christian faith and hid in the forests of Pontus for about six or seven years.

She was the mother of Basil the Elder; grandmother of Sts. Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste; great-grandmother of (and namesake for) Venerable Macrina the Younger. St. Basil the Great himself testified that it was through his father that he received from his grandmother Macrina his first lessons in the knowledge of God — she had passed on to the family the teaching of St. Gregory the Wonderworker.

She reposed around 340.

IMPORTANT DATE CORRECTION: the previous feast date "July 19/August 2" in fact belongs to her granddaughter and namesake — Venerable Macrina the Younger (sister of Sts. Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, †380) — removed as erroneously copied. Righteous Macrina the Elder has no separate individual feast day of her own in either the ROC or Greek calendars — she is commemorated together with the family of St. Basil the Great on January 14 (the exact Old Style/New Style correspondence is not clarified by the sources — stated honestly, without an invented conversion).

IMPORTANT IMAGE CORRECTION: the entry's sole image, whose metadata erroneously pointed to "Macrina the Younger," turned out on inspection not to be an icon of a person at all, but a photograph of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican — having nothing to do with either Macrina; it has been removed.

The category has been refined from righteous to confessor, following the Orthodox Encyclopedia's precise designation ("confessor") — she endured persecution without being executed.